A Timeline for the "Lock Her Up!" Anti-Hillary Campaign; Voter Surrpression

1.) A Timeline for the "Lock Her Up!" anti-Hillary Campaign

2015
September: 'Infowars' debuts its "Hillary for Prison" T-shirt. "I'm proud of it," says Alex Jones.

December" Donald Trump tweets an image of a supporter in a "Hillary for Prison" T-shirt.

2016
June 2: Trump tells a rally in San Jose, California, "Hillary Clinton has to go to jail. She has to go to jail...She's guilty as hell."

June 11: An electronic road sign on Interstate 30 outside Dallas is hacked to read "Hillary for Prison."

July 16: A plane pulling an 'Infowars'-branded "Hillary for Prison" banner flies over Cleveland.

July 18: Colorado Senate candidate Darryl Glenn tells the Republican National Convention, "We know [Clinton] enjoys her pantsuits, but...what she deserves is a bright orange jumpsuit." Retired Lt. General Michael Flynn urges on the chanting crowd: "Lock her up, that's right. Yep, that's right: Lock her up!"

July 19: In his RNC speech, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie puts Clinton on trial. As the crowd shouts, "Lock her up!" he responds, "We'll get there."

July 20: "'Lock her up.' I love that," Florida Attorney General General Pam Bondi quips during her RNC speech. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker tells attendees, "Hillary Clinton is the ultimate liberal Washington insider. If she were any more on the inside, she'd be in prison." Google searches for "Hillary for Prison" peak.

July 30: At a town parade in Iowa, children throw water balloons at a "Hillary for Prison" float while a man in a Hillary mask and an orange jumpsuit dances inside a cage.

Early August: Conservative media buzzes with the story of a Mississippi boy who wore a "Hillary for Prison" T-shirt to provoke his liberal teacher.

September: Trump's campaign website sells "Hillary for Prison" pins -- three for $6. (Source: "Jail Bait," Mother Jones, November/December 2016.)

2.) Chief Justice Roberts Rolls Back Voting Rights
"In 2013, when Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. issued the most far-reaching Supreme Court decision on voting rights in the 21st century, he finally succeeded in gutting a civil rights law he has been fighting his entire career. For three decades, Roberts has argued that the United States has become colorblind to the point where aggressive intervention is no longer necessary -- and this case, Shelby County v. Holder, was the pinnacle of that crusade."

Echoing former justice William Rehnquist, for whom he once clerked, "Roberts has long insisted the United States has achieved a postracial, colorblind society, a point he emphasized in his 2013 majority opinion in [Shelby]." The Voting Rights Act had required that jurisdictions with a long history of voting discrimination submit any changes in voting procedure to the DoJ for "preclearance" to ensure the changes didn't have a discriminatory impact. Preclearance had blocked more than 700 discriminatory voting changes between 1982 and 2006 alone.

In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made the case that offending states had not grown colorblind. "She recounted how federal investigators had secretly recorded Alabama officials referring to African Americans as 'Aborigines' and openly plotting to block a ballot initiative they thought would increase African American turnout, as 'every black, every illiterate,' would be 'bused [to the polls] on HUD financed buses.'"

"After the 5-4 Shelby decision, states passed a torrent of new voting restrictions that overwhelmingly affected minorities. On the day the decision was handed down, Texas announced that the only two forms of state voter identification it would accept were a driver's license or a gun license -- a measure the DoJ had previously blocked. Georgia moved some municipal elections in predominantly minority areas from November to May, depressing turnout by nearly 20 percent in one instance. Alabama implemented a strict voter ID law -- and then shut down driver's license offices in every country where more than 75 percent of voters were African American. Perhaps the most blatant was North Carolina's omnibus voting law. Passed shortly after the Shelby decision, the law imposed strict ID requirements, limited the registration window, and dramatically cut early voting during times traditionally used by African Americans."

"Lower-court decisions rejecting the Roberts orthodoxy haven't fallen along ideological lines, either. The very conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Texas' harsh voter ID law. A George W. Bush appointee wrote the majority opinion. 'The lower courts are coalescing around a broad view of the Voting Rights Act's prohibitions on discriminatory results,' says David Gans, a civil rights expert at the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center."

When the Supreme Court blocked North Carolina's voting law, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that he personally would have allowed most of the laws to take effect.

Despite lower court decisions blocking certain provisions of restrictive voting laws in Texas, North Carolina and Wisconsin, 14 states now have new voting restrictions that didn't exist in 2012. (Source: Stephanie Mencimer, "Colorblind Justice," Mother Jones, November/December 2016.)